I wondered if anyone uses virtualized desktop PCs (running WinXP Pro or older) to have some old applications that are seldom used available for some ongoing tasks.
Say you have a really old project that every once in a while needs a document update in a database system or something like that. The database application is running on a virtualized desktop that is only started when needed.
I think we could save energy, hardware and space if we would virtualize some of those old boxes. Any setups in your company?
edit Licensing could be of concern, but I guess you have a valid license for the old desktop box. Maybe the license isn't valid in a VM environment, I'd definitly check that before.
Sure enough, if the application is performance critic, virtualization could hurt. But I'm thinking about some kind of outdated application that is still used to perform, say a calculation every 12 weeks for a certain customer/service.
I use virtualized desktops for:
Support that requires VPN software I do not want on my own desktop. This also lets a whole team share the support computer for a specific customer.
A legacy system which we use several different versions of (depending on customer's version) and they're not really compatible so its good to have a virtualized desktop for each version.
We use virtualisation to test on a variety of Operating Systems - the server application runs under linux, and we have a production (real) server, and a couple of test servers, which are all VMs.
The client runs under Windows, which, being an OS X user I have to run in a VM, and the other developer I work with runs an XP VM on his 8-core Vista box.
(I also have a seperate VM for running CAD software, but that's not really programming)
It depends on the requirements of the legacy systems. Very often if a system is relient on a certain clock frequency, then it better and morereliable to keep the older OS systems running as Virtulized OS' can do funy things to performance.
If the legacy systems aren't that critical, then go for it! One piece of advice I would give is to ensure that the system works FULLY before chucking out your old 3.11 systems as I have been stung before! To fully perform the testing can cost more money then you might save, but its up to anyone who make the decisions to ensure that is considered.
We use virtualisation for testing out applications on Vista. Or rather customers do the testing and we use virtualisation to reproduce the bugs they complain about.
I guess the thing that would stop me from using lots of virtual instances of my favourite proprietary OS would be licencing. I presume Microsoft would want me to have a licence for every installation, virtual or otherwise?
We use VMWare with a virtual windows XP here at work to run some old development tools with very expensive licenses that don't run at all on Vista. So VMWare saved us about $5000 in licenses.
Since my last machine upgrade I have been running virtualised OS's for a number of tasks. For example I use a different set of Visual Studio plugins for managed and c++ unmanaged development. Some things I found:
Run your vmware setup on a machine with plenty of resources. I'll repeat...plenty of resources! A fast quad and 8GB of memory is what my current machine is running and it runs sweet (warning you need a 64bit OS for the 8GB!).
I wouldn't worry about app performance if your current physical hardware is old (2+ years). With a decent machine I find the virtualized apps run faster than on the legacy hardware!
When upgrading to a new workstation, p2v your old workstation. No need to worry about synergy or a KVM in the transition period any more!
I've used virtualisation so I could take my development environment around with me while travelling. As long as I could install MS Virtual PC, (and the PC/laptop had generous enough RAM) then I could access all my tools, VPN, Remote desktop links, SQL databases etc...
Worked fairly well, just a little slower than I like. I could have carted a laptop around, but found a small portable harddrive to be lighter/easier and just as effective.
However, consulting for several clients - all with different VPN requirements/passwords/databases/versions of frameworks & tools etc, I've found that having a Virtualised support environment for each is well worth it. Then multiple users have access to what is needed when supporting each client - they just need to either remote desktop (or run directly) the virtualised instance.
I've used VMs to handle work-related tasks that I didn't want / couldn't do on the company-issued laptop. Specifically, I needed to have several editions of the JRE running at the same time, which Java doesn't really like.
To get around this, I built several VMs that each ran the one tool I needed in trimmed-down XP instances.
Another thing to consider is that if you have a 5-yr-old server running some app, it's probably going to run just fine on a VM on new hardware. So, if you have a rack of old devices, buying one or two "real" servers, installing something like ESX (I'm most familiar with that tool, though Xen and others exist), then use a physical-to-virtual conversion tool to get those old devices switched to VMs so you can reduce your electricity consumption, management headaches, and worries about a critical device failing and not being able to find hardware for it.
We use VM for legacy apps, and have retired old machines that served up those apps. It eliminated the concern of matching drivers from NT to Win2k3. From a disaster recovery perspective this also helped as we couldn't find boxes to support the old apps at the DR data center.
The likes of VMWare are invaluable tools for browser testing of web applications. You can pretty easily test many combinations of OS and browser without having rank upon rank of physical machines running that software.
Related
I was wondering if justhost.com would be good enough to host a Wt C++ website/app on. It does allow FTP and SSH access as http://richelbilderbeek.nl/CppWtDeployGlobalHosted.htm tells me a host should, but I am just looking to get more input, or if you know of a better host?
I'd also ask them if you can install libraries on there, if not you'd have to compile yourself a giant static app, which could be a bit of annoying restriction.
It looks to me like their site is basically designed to host standard php style apps more than anything.
I use slicehost and Rackspace Cloud Servers.
The thing is they are full VPS's and give you full root access.
I would go with a true VPS plan, rather than a chroot style shared hosting plan, with ssh access added on top. The main problem would be neighbouring bloated applications using all the shared resources and giving you inconsistent performance.
Also with full root access, you can set up your app to start on boot, and sort out your own DB backup plan etc..
You still can get neighbours slowing you down on VPS accounts, but it's much reduced.
One thing I like with Witty is that my app running with 100 threads, even with the cheapest VPS plan it runs consistently and smooth up to 50 concurrent users (tested using load impact) with hardly any load on the machine at all.
My general pro c++ statement: Some c# and java people say c++ is only really useful for embedded, low powered hardware. I'd like to add that it's also useful for VPSs. Although hardware power is always growing, with virtualization, there's always more cheaper lower powered plans coming out that c++ is perfect for.
I used to run php, perl and python web servers on VPSs but my C++ witty app really does leave them all in the dust performance wise. The idea being you can pay less per month to host a c++ Web site that scales really well, rather than rails or other interpreted or byte compiled languages.
Also, I used to use a larger, 4 GB Slice to do my compiling until I bought myself a decent 6 core home box. The 256 MB (the smallest plan) is no good for compiling, but excellent for running.
We're thinking of running our TFS 2010 application tier on a virtual machine using VMWare.
We are a tiny shop (4 devs) and like the ability to upsize the power later. Data would probably reside on a real server.
Hive mind: Please, tell me if this is a moronic idea.
I'm not sure what the Microsoft recommendation is going to be here (although, I'm sure they'd suggest Hyper-V over VMWare at the very least).
That being said, I run TFS2010 in a lab environment with both TFS 2010 and the database within a VirtualPC instance (under Windows Server 2003). It works, and for the type of work that I'm doing, it works pretty well.
Given what you're asking, I think a VM for the application tier should be fine. I'm generally not a fan of virtualizing database servers, so I would stick with a separate machine that can be used for your data tier.
If you do wind up virtualizing the data tier, I would still strongly recommend tying it to a physical disk instead of a virtual HD.
Our development shop actually runs TFS 2010 on a VMWare. Database and everything. So far we have not encountered any problems, though I have read that it is possible to have some problems with SQL server on a VM. However, this is not our long term solution as well. This was done so we could get up and running without delay. As long as you are backing up your data I think this is a good short term solution.
Just do it, data and everything.
For low-performance stuff, I even run [OMG] Oracle on VMs.
In a research project involving virtualization and power management I am testing various resource allocation scenarios and custom power management algorithms. I am interested in isolating a virtual machine to use only a certain CPU core.
I was thinking about using Windows 2008R2 and Hyper-V, but Hyper-V does not allow setting CPU affinity for a virtual machine, is there any way I can make sure that a virtual machine running a CPU intensive task will use only one core of the CPU (the VM is configured to use a single CPU) and have the rest of the cores available for other task?
VMware ESX Server is an interesting choice since it provides the settings I need (including hot memory add), however it seems like a closed system. Does the OS of ESX Server, based on Linux from what I understand, allow for installing custom application through which to control aspects related to power management of the physical server's components (e.g. perform CPU frequency scaling). Does it provide any APIs? I am aware the product already has power management features, but I am looking for means to achieve custom implementations.
Besides these two solutions, can you recommend other hypervisors which provide facilities such as setting CPU affinity, CPU limits and reservations, hot memory add and which allow for custom applications running on the host server (also provide APIs to program such applications) - maybe Citrix XenSource, KVM (I am not familiar with these solutions)?
I don't think VMware would support modifications to the server, but you can get a command line on the ESX server as essentially you're right, it's linux underneath (RedHat mod I believe).
Xen/KVM are open source so you can hack away. You may be advised to go down the KVM route if you have budgetary constraints as the community will support you. The inclusion of Citrix may prove troublesome in an enterprise setting.
is there any way I can make sure that a virtual machine running a CPU intensive task will use only one core of the CPU
Openstack (KVM as hypervisor) provides a feature of CPU pinning through which you can bind a vCPU to a physical CPU core. Let me know if you need more information on the subject.
Here is a link explaining the feature. This link also confirms that Hyper-V doesn't support CPU pinning.
I need a way to install a distribuible application without user intervention, of course I currently have a distribution profile installed on my device (I can install or uninstall the application by means of iTunes or iPCU), the problem remain on the side of automation "no user intervention is required", basically I need to develop a software (maybe hack iTunesMobileDevice.dll) that install the application when a valid device (the one with a valid distribution profile) is connected to one machine (application server), so any ideas??....
Thanks in advance!
There is absolutely nothing in the standard API that will let you do this. I can't image a bigger security hole than a mechanism for installing software without the users intervention/knowledge. If Apple did find such a hole they would plug it so fast it would cause physicist to question certain assumptions about the speed of light.
You might could do this on a jailbroke device but AFIK all the open development tools require human interaction. You would probably have to write quite a bit from scratch and you would have all the security and software availability problems of a jailbroken device. You would also run the risk of Apple breaking the loophole you exploited in a future release.
If I may ask, why exactly are you trying to automatically install software? What advantage do you hope to gain by undermining your security to that extent? There might be a better way to go about it.
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I currently work in an organization that forces all software development to be done inside a VM. This is for a variety of risk/governance/security/compliance reasons.
The standard setup is something like:
VMWare image given to devs with tools installed
VM is customized to suit project/stream needs
VM sits in a network & domain that is isolated from the live/production network
SCM connectivity is only possible through dev/test network
Email and office tools need to be on live network so this means having two separate desktops going at once
Heavyweight dev tools in use on VMs so they are very resource hungry
Some problems that people complain about are:
Development environment runs slower than normal (host OS is windows XP so memory is limited)
Switching between DEV machine and Email/Office machine is a pain, simple things like cut and paste are made harder. This is less efficient from a usability perspective.
Mouse in particular doesn't seem to work properly using VMWare player or RDP.
Need a separate login to Dev/Test network/domain
Has anyone seen or worked in other (hopefully better) setups to this that have similar constraints (as mentioned at the top)?
In particular are there viable options that would remove the need for running stuff in a VM altogether?
In particular are there viable options
that would remove the need for running
stuff in a VM altogether?
Given that you said there are unspecified risk/governance/security/compliance reasons for your organization's use of VMs, I doubt any option we could provide could negate those. Ultimately it sounds like they just need their development team as sandboxed as possible.
(And even so, the question/answers would probably be better off at serverfault since it's more networking/security oriented.)
It sounds like a big problem is not having enough horsepower on the host OS. WinXP should be fine, but you need to have adequate hardware. i.e. at least 3 GB RAM, dual core CPU, and hardware that supports virtualization. Clipboard sync should be working with the VM.
I am not currently doing this, but I've thought about it, and we're kind of kicking this idea around with the idea of making it easier to standardize the dev environment, and to avoid wasting a day when you get a new PC. I'm dismayed to hear that it's not the utopia that I had dreamed...
I've been using VMs as a development environment for a long time. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, and it presents lots of benefits.
Ensuring a consistent environment
Separating file systems for different backup scenarios
Added security
Potentially gives developers access to more raw computing power.
There is a lot of innovation in the VM world, as evidenced by the growing popularity of VM farms, hardware support for virtualization, and controlled "turnkey" solutions, like MS's VirtualPC images for testing browser compatibility and the TurnKey set of appliances.
As others have said, your issues are probably due to insufficient hardware or sub-optimal configurations.
Development environment runs slower than normal (host OS is windows XP so memory is limited)
This should not be noticeable. XP vs. Windows Vista or Win7 is a marginal comparison. I would check the amount of physical RAM allocated to the VM.
Switching between DEV machine and Email/Office machine is a pain, simple things like cut and paste are made harder. This is less efficient from a usability perspective.
There are VM-specific optimizations/configurations that can make these tasks seamless. I would consult your VM maintenance staff.
Mouse in particular doesn't seem to work properly using VMWare player or RDP.
Again, should be seamless, but consult VM staff.
Need a separate login to Dev/Test network/domain
I would see this as a business decision: your company could obviously set up virtual machines with the same domain poicies as your own personal workstation, but may have other (big brother?) purposes for forcing you to login separately.
As far as using VM's as an agent of control, I think there are better solutions, like well-designed authorization controls around the production machines. There's nothing like paper trails to make people behave themselves.